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And so, as replacement goal-kicker Rhys Priestland split the posts from close range in the 82nd minute of the Australia-Wales Test match at Principality Stadium in Cardiff, that was it for Wallabies season 2021.
In 2019 the Australian Rugby League Commission cobbled together a white paper of sorts, a plan to prop up under-performing Sydney NRL clubs with revenue that would apparently flow from broadcasters once the club had relocated to a new place where people watch telly.
And so to Japan in Japan and the Wallabies should be afraid.
On the back of Nathan Cleary’s towering bombs and defence of brutal intensity, Penrith Panthers have won the 2021 NRL Premiership by beating South Sydney Rabbitohs 14-12.
One day, and it was a few years ago now, I was at Bonville Golf Resort just south of Coffs Harbour where the Wallabies were hosting their annual golf day with local business folk.
There was a time, and that time has passed, when a tour by an international rugby team was something of a big deal.
And so, as the prophecy foretold, it has come to this: sudden death, instant death, extremely painful and bloody death, if you will, it’s grand final time of this our 2021 NRL Premiership.
And so to Brisbane and Boks II: Revenge of The Boks, who surely can’t be beaten again, can they?
In his press conference ahead of his record-breaking 60th Test match as captain of Australia on Friday, 29-year-old Michael Hooper referred to 25-year-old Andrew Kellaway as “a kid”.
Quade Cooper? Quade Cooper! Quade! Bloody! Cooper! Well, how about that.
And so to Perth and Bledisloe III, nominally a dead rubber though our countries don’t contest what the Poms call “friendlies”, not really.
Dave Rennie, as he did with the Hurricanes, Chiefs and Glasgow Warriors, seems to have imbued the Wallabies with the mandate to “play”, to have a go, to express themselves. And to go big or die trying.
Beat the All Blacks?
For mine, it was the skateboarders, the little scamps, the oldest barely out of their teens. For there they were, representatives of Australia, USA and Brazil, chairing off a competitor, No.1-ranked Misugu Okamoto of Japan who’d crashed in the skatepark and run fourth.
Jordan Petaia’s on the wing and Marika Koroibete is not for obvious reasons.
Well. What a week of Aussie Olympic glory, sports fans, with no less than fourteen (14!) gold medals, three silver medals and a raft of glorious, bronze bullion draped around the necks of our bronzed-Aussie beauties, these people are champions all.
And so it begins: the great quadrennial sports carnival of human beings of Planet Earth when our manifold, disparate, oft-clashing, ever-closer cultures hold a great coming together for one express purpose … gambling!
And so it begins, the world’s great quadrennial sports carnival, a fortnight of leaping, running, throwing, lifting, swimming, climbing, paddling and prancing about, making cool, swirly patterns with ribbons.
One of the things that makes Sir David Attenborough’s Life on Earth documentaries so compelling is that they aren’t fairy tales.
The Olympics gets underway this week with medals awarded across 339 events in 33 different sports. We’ve done some heavy lifting and pulled out ten of the best marquee events of the Tokyo Games.
I dunno… those rallies illustrate public opinion. Political types do … I dunno, listen, a bit. The Souths one got 80,000, and got Souths back in, along with a few other things. What do you reckon – if they get 50,000 people to march up Miller St? Or 20,000… or have two rallies – one in Gosford, one in North Sydney … or march down the Pacific Highway! Ha. It’d be something. Make people listen.
Bring back the Bears: A million reasons why they're needed right here and not PNG
I see your point. But anecdotally, and they’ve done many studies and surveys, and found that the North Sydney Bears fans would be cool with sharing their brand / club / whatever, with the Central Coast. And the Central Coast would be cool with the Bears as “their” team and to join up with the lower and upper north shore. Both sets of supporters – and maybe it was the same for Magpies and Tigers, Dragons and Steelers, Bears and Sea Eagles fans back in the day, are pragmatic enough to know that if they want to have a footy club and for them to be the Bears, they have to share with the other mob. And it would feel less a merge as a new birth, or arrival. Something. I dunno. I just think it’d be very cool.
Bring back the Bears: A million reasons why they're needed right here and not PNG
They don’t have to identify with Gosford. They just have to share the North (of) Sydney Bears. There’s a million people. They don’t need many. The Dragons, Bulldogs and Sharks have a million between them. There’s three clubs. Bears are just one.
Bring back the Bears: A million reasons why they're needed right here and not PNG
Ha. See you at the rally, then?
Bring back the Bears: A million reasons why they're needed right here and not PNG
Because of the ancient enmity between North Sydney Bears fans and Manly Warringah Sea Eagles fans, and that Bears fans will come to Central Coast and vice versa. Both regions – North Shore and Central Coast – want to be the Bears. They’ll share the Bears. Studies have shown. Surveys. Anecdotes.
Bring back the Bears: A million reasons why they're needed right here and not PNG
Manly.
Bring back the Bears: A million reasons why they're needed right here and not PNG
Excellent stuff, Geevant.
BRETT GEEVES: 'The day I truly believed Justin Langer was going to kill me'
Nah it was this one I was thinking of… 96 at Athletic Park… https://youtu.be/qxmoImpQrG8
Own the haka, own collisions, own the rolling maul - and 27 other ways to beat the All Blacks
Ah! You are of course correct, curse you! 😁 I’ll get the Ed to get that fixed. What was the game in 96 the ABs put 40 on us, I reckon, in terrible conditions. Kronfeld was prominent from (clearly bad) memory.
Own the haka, own collisions, own the rolling maul - and 27 other ways to beat the All Blacks
Mate they’re different sports with entirely different contexts. You’re comparing yarns about beating the USA in basketball and nearly losing to France B in rugby. One was glass half empty – we should’ve beaten France B at home, while beating the USA, even in an Exhibition game with 3 players missing from the NBA finals, is huge in the context of the game, the team, the Olympics, history, Mabo, etc.
You better believe in the Boomers, they're the real deal
Did you read the first paragraph of this one?
You better believe in the Boomers, they're the real deal
Yes, thanks Dean
A win is a win but be thankful Wallabies weren't playing the real France
Yes! That pass was flat and good and only missed, as Maxwell Smart said, by that much. It was the playing sense I liked, and the combo with the runner. But you’d suggest McDermott starts in one or more of the next two Tests.
A win is a win but be thankful Wallabies weren't playing the real France
Good one, Duncan. I’ll get the Eds to look at that.
Fancy that Australia, a drunken punch-up in Bali?
So … he’s Tevita Jnr? Or Tevita Pantai Junior?
Sorry – i don’t get it. Is his dad Tevita Pangai Senior?
They may love the club but players gonna play - for themselves
Hi mate. Thanks for the kind words. And yeah, good fellah is Matt. Check out May issue Inside Sport (Collingwood bloke on cover) and https://www.playersvoice.com.au/matt-mitchell-i-didnt-want-him-see-what-saw/.
On a mission: Matt Bowen and Matt Mitchell's Australian Story
I didn’t say he couldn’t coach.
I said that he’s no lesser coach for a 25% record as an overall one of 66%.
I said that it’s his players that win games.
And Bellamy would agree.
And so would Bennett. And Sticky. And John Morris.
Coaches are important. Point was not so important to dominate the news cycle for a week because two blokes swapped jobs.
Bennett versus Seibold is less interesting than many, many, many things
That was the point mate – that during Origin and without his best players, his win record is a quarter. But with his best players it’s two-thirds. And he’s the same coach doing the same coachy things with the nuffies as the champions.
Bennett versus Seibold is less interesting than many, many, many things
And there’s the rub, for mine. Why’d they anoint that No.7 with the C and all the mega-bucks when he’s not the best 7 or C? I love Hooper. But Pocock’s just better. Just is.
Mick O’Connor? Start Pocock in the 7 and Hooper off the bench, thanks
Ha. Isn’t that true of all of us, Carl?
Mick O’Connor? Start Pocock in the 7 and Hooper off the bench, thanks
Sport can do stuff, like everyone. But the big picture is all the cars and smokestacks pumping rubbish into the air. It’s got to stop. We’ve got to get energy from the sun and wind, and the waves and stuff that doesn’t so root the atmosphere and environment, the thing otherwise known as where we live.
Hot enough (to cancel the Test match cricket) for ya?
NASA has no such graph. They could probably rig you up one based on the odds of you picking the card at the Valley, my tip about 8 million to one. That’s why bookies drive Mercedes.
Question: If they cancelled the Cox Plate one year because it was 47 degrees and horses might die, and the AJC and Chris Waller and, I dunno, Johnny Tapp said climate change was rooting racing, would that … affect you?
Hot enough (to cancel the Test match cricket) for ya?
Ha. You even look at it?
Here: https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
Evidence. Facts and stuff.
Hot enough (to cancel the Test match cricket) for ya?
I don’t know mate. I know it’s NASA. They have put up a graph. And they are Experts. I trust Experts from NASA over James from Forbes, and Investors.com, and Alan Jones, and every other screaching parrot beholden to big coal, and what have you.
I trust the Scientists. They have no reason to lie about it. They have not conspired all together to lie about it. Since humans began pumping shit into the sky, the planet’s getting hotter you only need measure glaciers to prove it. And it’s unprecdented in the last 650,000 years.
And NASA.
Hot enough (to cancel the Test match cricket) for ya?
Which ones though? Perth? Adelaide? Christchurch? Super League showed us fish where the fish are. You can’t take league to non-league lands. The strip of northern Sydney and north of Sydney, there’s a million people, league fans, without a team. Only need 5 per cent of them – and however many people who’d jump back aboard from other places – and you’ve got 50,000+ members.
Bring back the Bears: A million reasons why they're needed right here and not PNG